If the impact measure was poorly implemented, then I think such an impact-reducing AI could indeed result in the world turning out that way. However, note that the technique in the paper is intended to, for a very wide range of variables, make the world if the AI wasn’t turned on as similar as possible to what it would be like if it was turned on. So, you can potentially avoid the AI-controlled-drone scenario by including the variable “number of AI-controlled drones in the world” or something correlated with it, as these variables could be have quite different values between a possible world in which the AI was turned on and a possible world in which the AI wasn’t.
Coming up with a set of variables wide enough to include that might seem a little difficult, but I’m not sure it would be. One option is to, for every definable function of the world, include the value of the function as one of the variables the AI considers and tries to avoid interfering with.
If the impact measure was poorly implemented, then I think such an impact-reducing AI could indeed result in the world turning out that way. However, note that the technique in the paper is intended to, for a very wide range of variables, make the world if the AI wasn’t turned on as similar as possible to what it would be like if it was turned on. So, you can potentially avoid the AI-controlled-drone scenario by including the variable “number of AI-controlled drones in the world” or something correlated with it, as these variables could be have quite different values between a possible world in which the AI was turned on and a possible world in which the AI wasn’t.
Coming up with a set of variables wide enough to include that might seem a little difficult, but I’m not sure it would be. One option is to, for every definable function of the world, include the value of the function as one of the variables the AI considers and tries to avoid interfering with.